SHOOTOUT: Notebooks for Professionals

Looking for a good notebook, but are on a tight budget of less than 55K? Or perhaps you have the budget, but want a feature rich notebook. How about a stylish one that's well worth your class, or an ultraportable for those long journeys? We evaluated 18 different notebooks that cater to all these needs

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Every notebook brings with it, its own flavor of class and quality. Some have looks; some class, while some claim to have it all. In this Shootout we dissected 18 different models, belonging to the 'Business Class' range from 9 different brands. We tested them for various aspects ranging from Component level testing, Productivity, battery backup, Graphics, Connectivity, to even Vista compatibility. To test all this, we used proven benchmarks like 3D Mark06, 3D Mark05 for Graphics test, Battery Mark for backup test, PC Mark05 for component test, etc. We used our standard and proven Brown Gibson statistical model to arrive at the weightages for all the categories.

Speaking of category, we've divided the 18 laptops into four of them--budget laptops under 55K, mid-range laptops between 55-70K, ultraportables, and finally those that are a class apart for people with a style to match.

Performance tests
In performance test we used benchmarks like Multimedia Content Creation 2003 and Business Winstone 2002, so as to stress the notebook with regular productivity applications as well as multimedia content applications. Likewise for graphics test, we used 3D Mark05 and 3D Mark06 which not only test the gaming potential of the notebook, but also the image rendering and image threading, through which one can easily determine the graphics potential of a notebook. We used 3D Mark06 for notebooks that were shipped with dedicated in-built graphics, so you might not find the 3D Mark06 scores for those notebooks that do not come with in-built graphs card. This is because of the fact that those notebooks have in-built graphics and no dedicated graphics card, thus, limiting their graphics potential. In fact one notebook (Sahara HJ06C) didn't give a score on 3D Mark05 as well, mainly because of its lower video memory that restricted it from delivering any high-end graphics experience.

We used PC Mark05 to test notebooks for things like the hard disk general usage, multithreading, Web page rendering, file decryption and 3D-pixel shader. It's a synthetic benchmark that covers almost all such important components of a notebook. This benchmark, in itself, runs 11 different tests. For testing the backup and connectivity, we used Battery Mark02 and QCheck for wireless connectivity.

Last but least, we also ran the Vista compatibility check on all the laptops to check their Vista readiness. This was done irrespective of which OS they shipped with. We have also taken the problems faced with Vista drivers that have become common. As a result, the notebooks that have more number of drivers working fine for them get a better rating compared to those which don't. In short, even the minute details have been tested for, as far as the Vista upgradability/compatibility is concerned.

Features
Talk of notebook features and they come from all walks of it. There are built-in Web cams, finger-print readers, TPM and so on. We broke up the features according to the notebook category under test. We categorized all these features into five categories--physical, connectivity, components, software and protection. The 'physical' category comprises screen size and the weight of the notebook.; Connectivity has options like Bluetooth version 1/2, infrared, MMC reader, S-Video, DVI port, FireWire, etc other than the regular LAN/modem, WLAN, etc. We also looked at the number and type of USB ports and PCMCIA slots. The third feature category--component--looks at the type of optical drives, whether the notebook has a DVD combo, a CD-RW or a multi-recorder DVD-RW. We also took into consideration the hard-drive capacity and any additional component that has been shipped with the notebook, for eg, wireless optical mouse or an MMC adapter etc. Software have always been an essential part of the package, hence whether or not all the essential software were shipped with the notebook, has also been taken into consideration. These include recovery CDs, driver CDs, OSes, etc are always a boon to the buyer. Lastly, we took into account, what could be a very important factor in today's data threat scenario, the protection. We looked at all types of protection available in a notebook, be it a finger-print reader, BIOS level HDD protection, touch-pad lock, TPM, or even rescue option available at the time of boot up.

Pricing
Price remains a very important feature that people base their buying decisions on. So we took into account both price and warranty in deciding for the winner. The notebooks we received range from INR 50k to 2 lakhs. In terms of warranty, almost all came with a 1-year warranty but there are some with the option of additional extended warranty, which is always a better deal.

With competition and entry of new brands in the market, the prices of notebooks are nose-diving with each passing day and vendors are coming up with new tricks to win the market share. Hence, we hope our extensive review will help you arrive at the best notebook for your requirements.

Note: All the overall scores in the pages to follow are out of 300, while the individual scores are out of 100 each.

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